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From top: 100 Facts About Pandas; still from Gogu
rt ad; still from Jape’s Floating music video “No Disco was on at the time which we loved. However, lots of videos on it seemed to be found footage or shot on Super 8 which we love now but reacted against at the time. We were trying to up the quality of what was being made because we loved the music,” states Mike. In order to get good stuff, you need to make stuff and have a portfolio. Needless to say, budgets were limited if not non-existent. “Budgets for music videos collapsed in the early 2000s – we did one big budget video for The Script, shot in LA, and we hated making it. Even for bands like Ash and Super Furry Animals who were huge in our eyes at the time, the budget was €5,000 at most and that might involve a few months’ work,” reflects Enda. However, the quality of their work ultimately became their calling card. Creating videos for acts such as Nina Hynes, hip-hop outfit Creative Control and Bell XI led to UK representation and work on singles such as Bloc Party’s One Month Off which enabled the boys to augment CGI war scenes with footage from Ray Harryhausen’s fairy tale stop motion films. They also delivered Jape’s Floating video, in association with M&E, which saw Richie Egan receiving a slo-mo pelting by various assortments of fruit ’n’ veg. There’s even a nod to Peter Gabriel’s iconic Sledgehammer video in it. “In order to get good stuff, you need to make stuff and have a portfolio. At one point we had a folder of 48 music video pitch ideas,” says Mike. And, inevitably, when the bill-paying exercise kicked in, the world of commercials came calling. There was an interim period negotiating the fact that they had hired some animators to expand their operation in the city, leading to the conundrum of working to pay for other people’s wages. Around the same time, The Chalets were also earning strong notices and improved billing on tours and the festival circuit. “It was tricky to navigate because Enda was the 3-D animation master so I needed him to finish stuff,” says Mike. “For one video, we actually finished it on the tour bus. Mike had brought a new laptop so he just joined us. Of course, we got fucked up and had fun as well,” adds Enda. There was also an element of punching above their weight and scale, the hallmark of many successful outfits. They remember shooting one of their first big ads for chocolate milk. It had to be delivered on a Monday morning, 3-D animated and when they went to click the button to render it, the software told them it would take two weeks! The software needed cost €8,000 at the time. The solution? They downloaded a demo which would enable one to work for 30 days and scurried around to all their mates’ houses to install it, thus enabling them to render-atlarge and meet the Monday morning deadline. And so, in the intervening years, Mike and Enda established themselves as witty and able directors taking on a raft of commercials both here and abroad. Enda lives in Dublin while Mike is London-based. Their style embraced humour in what on paper appeared to humdrum product endorsements. They conceived of zombie suckers who latch on to ➝ 26